• Total US Veteran Population 23,443,000 (Per US Dept. of Veterans Affairs 9/08)
• Army – 44.4%, Navy- 22.7%, Air Force- 18.2%, Marines- 10.3%, Non-Defense- 1%, Reserve Forces- 3% (Approx. Figures Per US Dept. of Veterans Affairs 9/08)
• Total US Female Veteran Population 1,802,000 (Per US Dept. of Veterans Affairs 9/08)
• Veterans in California account for 9% of all US Veterans (Per US Dept. of Veterans Affairs 9/08)
• Veterans make up roughly 8.6% of the civilian population 18 years and older in Fresno County (census.gov 2005) Roughly 80,075 of 931,098 in 2007
• Regardless of the day of the week, Veterans Day is observed on November 11. This day was chosen to commemorate World War I, which ended on November 11, 1918.

War and Dad

By Maude Norris

I was raised a Navy brat the first 18 ½ years of my life. I was married to a U. S. Marine for the next 14 months until his hardship discharge from the corps. In those early days before the war, a navy officer’s daughter marrying an enlisted marine, was considered a No-No. My first 19½ years of life revolved around the military and that way of life.

When World War II broke out, I was only 11½ years old. December 7, 1941, the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, was a nice warm Sunday morning, and I was playing jacks on the front porch with a girlfriend of mine. Around 12 noon a group of Shore Patrolmen from the San Diego Naval Base, and Military Policemen from the Marine Corps Depot (SP and MP as they were called), came up the streets telling us to have our fathers report to their duty station as war had broken out with Japan. We were living in San Diego right across from the Marine Corps Base. In 1941, it was known as Gate 3. I remember going into the house and telling Dad what the SPs had told us, and I came close to being punished because Dad thought I was joking. I told him to turn on the radio, and there it was telling about the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Dad reported to duty, and we didn’t see him for over 72 hours. I wasn’t sure where the Hawaiian Islands were at that time, nor did I really realize the implication of the attack.

Dad left for overseas duty in the Pacific, on July 13, 1942. He came home once during the period, of 1942 to 1946, and that was during the Christmas holidays in December 1943. Even that was cut short as he was ordered back to the west coast to report for another overseas duty assignment. We did see him around 1944 when his ship docked in Port Hueneme, California. He did not come back home until June 1946.

A clear memory I have was after Dad came home from the war, we were sitting down to dinner in our home on Midvale Avenue, in West Los Angeles, and a car backfired outside our house. My father jumped from his chair at the head of the table and ducked under the table. Of course, we all laughed, but it wasn’t funny to him. I know we upset him that day very much. That was one of the few times he did mention how he thought he would have to abandon his ship three different times due to Kamikazes’ attacks on his ship. I believe the name of the ship he was referring to was U. S. Cheleb.

Dad was the paymaster for a large area when he was overseas. Somewhere I have a receipt for the amount of money he was responsible for. I think it was about $6,000,000. He would fly to the different islands and board certain ships and pay the servicemen. I believe that is why he was on Espartos Santos for about 13 or more months. I know he was supposed to have landed at Guadalcanal, but due to the battle going on at the time, they diverted the ship to Espartos Santos. I heard Dad telling Mum about how he was in the outhouse one night, on the island of Espartos Santos, and he bent over to pick up the roll of toilet paper that had dropped to the floor, when he heard a bullet wheeze over his head. If he hadn’t bent down, the bullet would have gotten him in the area of his throat.

Mum would get very upset when the mail was slow in getting to her. Years later Mum told me she always knew approximately the area where Dad was. Before Dad left, they had marked a global map into sections, and he would be able to tell her by that map, what section he was in. In their early days of marriage, Mum had taught Dad Pippin Shorthand. They stopped teaching it in the Massachusetts school in 1926, the year Mother graduated from high school. Dad was very proficient in Pippin, and he would scribble it on different sections of the paper. Mum was able to decipher by the number on the letter and scribbles in the letter approximately where he was. They would number the envelope so they could keep track of each other’s letters. It never ceased to amaze me how Mum could write a specific question, and she would receive an answer to that question in Dad’s next letter before he had received her letter with the question she was asking him. To the best of my knowledge, I don’t think the censors ever caught on to what they were doing.

There were several more close calls that I heard him talking to Mum about, but he never talked to the five of us kids about anything that happened to him during the war. Of course, they did not know I was listening, and I would have been in deep trouble if they found out. The Armed Services now have realized that the men and women are under stress when they are fighting and each person reacts differently to a buddy’s death, bombing of their ship, or an aircraft shot down. If the military had had Critical Incident Stress Disorder after World War II, maybe my parents might have stayed together. Both Mum and Dad could have used their services to talk out the problems they had while separated from one another.

Dad was an officer at the end of World War II, and if he had put himself into the hospital for war nerves, his career in the U. S. Navy would have been over. I know Dad was very proud that he was a Mustanger in the navy. Mustang is someone who has come up the ranks from enlisted man to an officer.

I know it wasn’t all bad from the stories he told about visiting USO entertainers and being able to see first-run movies. Dad wasn’t any kind of a hero. He was just doing his job like many other servicemen, and all he wanted was to get home to his family. I did notice when Dad came home for good, he seemed more solemn and to a degree, a bit more understanding of us with our problems of growing up.